Sleep Doesn't Come 'Til Four AM
by Evil Cosmic Triplets
Summary: Tim Callahan has always dreaded receiving one of those middle of the night phone calls. Based on the Donald Strachey movies, which are based on Richard Stevenson's Donald Strachey Mystery novels.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and am not making a profit through the writing of this.

**A/N:** Characterizations are based on the movies. This was written for the writing prompt, Insomnia.

* * *

It's midnight. Tim takes his glasses off and places them on the nightstand, lets the book he's been reading fall to the bed beside him.

Donald's not home. Again. It's been three nights this week, and Tim can't sleep.

It's not that he's worried (he is, he just refuses to admit it), but Donald had promised to be home tonight, and it's...Tim squints at the alarm clock, the red numbers blurring without his glasses on...12:04 AM.

"It's no longer tonight," Tim says aloud to the empty room. "Suppose this means you'll be home tonight, tonight." He chuckles humorlessly at his own joke and runs a hand through his hair.

He's got an early morning. He should turn in, but Donald hasn't called. Not that Donald always calls when he's not coming home (except, most of the time he does call), and he'd promised. Not one of those promises that Tim knew he'd be breaking, but an actual promise that Tim had known Donald meant to keep.

"Where are you?" Tim whispers.

He closes his eyes and runs through everything that Donald had told him about this case that he's been working on (not much), and what could have possibly been wrong to keep his husband out past midnight four nights in a row. He comes up with nothing, and wishes (not for the first time) that Donald had a safer, simpler profession that didn't keep him out at all hours of the night, one that didn't put him in the direct line of danger. He knows Donald will never take a desk job, won't go back to school to get a degree in philosophy (people don't shoot at philosophers, or punch them in the face) or underwater basket weaving.

He doesn't let his mind go where it wants to - images of Donald's twisted and broken body lying in a ditch somewhere; or his lifeless eyes staring up at the full moon, perfectly circular bullet-hole in the center of Donald's forehead; or Donald tied to a chair, rough ropes digging into his wrists, making them a bloody mess as he's struck by a meaty fist over and over again.

No, Tim doesn't let his mind wander there. Instead, he pictures Donald alive, well, sitting beside him on one of those front porch swings, cup of coffee in one hand, the other hand clasping Tim's. They're retired, and have nothing better to do than watch the neighbors and make pithy comments to each other. Donald will smile when Tim leans in close to whisper that the little old lady across the street is really a spy, and they'll laugh when Donald whispers that she's buried her husband in the backyard.

Tim smiles to himself and almost falls asleep, the idea of he and Donald growing into old and grey busybodies relaxing him, but jerks upright when the phone rings. It's a little past one in the morning now, his thoughts having gotten well away with him, and he stares at the phone like it's something foreign, and for a few rings, it is.

Dread fills the pit of his stomach, and Tim's hands shake when he reaches for the phone. He can't breathe, and barely manages a rough, "Hello?" when he finally answers.

He knows, intellectually, that it's probably Donald calling him to let him know he'll be late, and he'll pretend to have been asleep, and grouchy at having been abruptly woken. His heart and body seem to be on an entirely different page than his slow as molasses brain, though, and they know that it's not Donald on the other end of the phone. They know something that Tim doesn't know yet, something that makes him tremble when the voice on the other end of the phone is not Donald's.

"What?" Tim asks dumbly. "I- what?"

The voice on the other end, a woman's, stops mid-sentence, and there's a sigh, and then she repeats words that makes Tim's heart skip several beats. Words that render him numb.

"No," he says. Refusing to believe the words, even after they've been repeated several times.

"No, Donald promised he'd be home tonight," he says. "He never breaks his promises."

Even as he says those words, Tim knows they aren't true. Donald _has_ broken promises before. Dozens of them, but never on purpose, and never like this.

"I'm sorry," the voice says.

She sounds tired, weary, like she's been working a twenty hour shift and wants to go home and crawl into bed and sleep for days. Tim can relate. He wants to crawl beneath the covers and curl into a ball and sleep, and then wake up and find that this was nothing more than a dream. He pinches himself and winces.

"I-is-" Tim doesn't even know what he's trying to ask, isn't sure he wants an answer to the question should he gather the words to ask it. The words, _Mr. Strachey's been shot,_ ring in his head, and he pictures Donald's dead eyes staring up at him from blood soaked grass lit only by the moon.

"He's stable," the woman says, and Tim's breath comes out of him in a rush. There are tears on his face, and he's shaking, but his chest no longer feels like it's being crushed in a vice.

"When can I, when-"

"You can come see him now," she says. "He won't be awake for several hours, but you're listed as his emergency contact, and his husband. You can come sit with him."

"But what about visiting hours?" Tim blurts out stupidly, feeling both giddy with relief and terrified, because Donald had been shot, he'd needed surgery. He'd almost died.

The woman chuckles. "That won't be a problem. He was asking for you before he was wheeled into surgery, and the doctor believes it would be best for Mr. Strachey to see a familiar face when he wakes."

Tim gets the floor and room number from the nurse, and after thanking her, he quickly dresses and is out the door before he realizes that he's forgotten his glasses and his shoes and has to go back. He forces himself to take slow, deliberate breaths, and to stop a moment to get his bearings before he climbs into his vehicle (fully dressed) and takes the quickest route to the hospital.

He stands at the entrance to the hospital, the clock mocking him as it glaringly marks the time at 2 AM. His feet move of their own accord. He feels like he's floating. He lingers for a moment outside of the gift shop, staring dumbly at a teddy bear holding a heart that says, "Get Well, Soon". There's a bouquet of flowers in a cup with the same message, and a foil balloon, and Tim ends up getting the teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers, and feeling foolish, but he's never done this before. Donald had better not make him go through this ever again.

The elevator doors open quickly, and Tim jabs at the button for the fifth floor a little too hard, hoping that no one will stop the elevator on the way up. He doesn't want to see anyone, doesn't want to be delayed, doesn't want to have to keep forcing the images of Donald that keep putting themselves front and center in his mind away. He wants to see that Donald's alive. That there's not a bullet in the middle of his head. That he's breathing. He wants to lie down beside the man he loves and hold him. He doubts the hospital bed will be big enough for that, knows he'll have to settle for sitting in a chair and holding whatever part of Donald that he can reach.

The elevator ride goes smoothly, and Tim makes a stop at the nurse's station to double-check the information he'd gotten over the phone (he hadn't exactly been at his best at the time) and is directed to a private room. They can't afford a private room, at least Tim doesn't think they can, but he doesn't say anything.

There's no warning from the nurses for him to prepare himself for what he'll see, though there are sympathetic looks, and kind eyes, and Tim doesn't know what to do with himself once he's in the room and the door is closed behind him. He busies himself with arranging the teddy bear and flowers, eyes straying from the lone bed in the center of the room and the machines, the wires attached to the machines, the IV pole perched at the head of the bed, to the window, the open door that leads to a bathroom, to the TV mounted on the wall. Finally, his eyes land on a chair, not one of those hard, plastic chairs that he'd been expecting, but an actual armchair that looks like it might even be comfortable, set up beside the bed.

His feet, not as cowardly as his eyes, carry him forward, and he all but collapses into the chair. Bone tired, yet wide awake, Tim finally lets his gaze fall to the figure lying on the slightly tilted hospital bed.

"Oh, baby," Tim whispers, taking in the ugly bruises that mar Donald's face, and the thick, red-stained bandage that is taped to his chest. He remembers the woman on the phone had said that the bullet had missed Donald's heart by a few millimeters.

Tim can't remember the last time he'd seen Donald lie so still, and it's scary, but Donald's chest rises as he takes a breath and Tim lets out a breath that he'd been holding. Before it registers in his mind what he's doing, Tim's standing and pressing a kiss to Donald's lips, forehead, chin, to the patch of diluted red on the otherwise white bandage that's strapped across Donald's chest.

"You foolish, foolish man," Tim whispers. He's shaking, and there are tears leaking out of his eyes, and he wants to yell and scream, but more than anything, he wants Donald to wake him up with a tender kiss and ask him if he'd missed him, tell him that he's dreaming, that this is all just a nightmare.

"Hey, hey, babe, don't cry." Donald's voice is paper thin, but Tim hears it, even over the beeping of the monitor, and he wipes at his eyes, even as he glares at Donald.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," Tim says.

"I know," Donald says. He fights to keep his eyes open, to move his hand. Tim captures the fidgeting hand in his own, squeezes it until Donald squeezes back.

"It was movie night," Tim says, angry though he knows he shouldn't be. "You promised that you'd be home."

"I know, babe," Donald says, voice raspy, eyes blinking slowly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to break my promise."

Tim wants to hold onto the spark of anger that had ignited itself in his chest, but he can't when Donald's struggling to keep his eyes open, and weakly squeezing his hand. He can't hold onto his anger when all he wants to do is bundle Donald up and never let him leave their home again.

"I know you didn't," Tim says. He squeezes Donald's hand.

"I bought you flowers," Donald says. "They were real pretty, like you."

Tim chuckles, and brushes his thumb across Donald's knuckles. Flowers are how Donald apologizes for late nights at the office, or cases that keep him from coming home at all. He'd been expecting them.

"They're gone," Donald says, face falling, and Tim's heart breaks a little when a tear slides down Donald's cheek.

"Hush, now," Tim says, feeling utterly defeated. He brushes the tear away, and presses a kiss to Donald's lips. "You can buy me flowers when you get out of the hospital to make it up to me."

"Aren't you supposed to buy me flowers?" Donald asks, a little more awake after Tim's kiss.

"They're right there," Tim says, pointing to the bouquet of flowers that he'd placed next to the 'get well' teddy bear.

Donald's lips quirk in a smile when Tim places the bear on his chest. Tim adjusts his glasses when he feels Donald's eyes boring into him.

"I didn't...when I got the call, I..."

"I'm sorry," Donald apologizes.

"I know," Tim says. "I love you."

"I love you," Donald says, eyelids losing the fight to stay open.

Tim leans in to give him another kiss before he settles into the chair beside the bed, content to watch Donald's chest rise and fall as he sleeps. It's four in the morning, and hand entwined in Donald's, head resting on the hospital bed in a way that will make his neck ache, Tim finally finds sleep.


End file.
